What it takes to be a category king

In SaaS, everyone wants to rule over a kingdom. But instead of fighting to topple category leaders, startups today prefer to build their own kingdom from scratch. Let’s look at how and why that’s happening.

Our top 3 reads

OpenView's Kyle Poyar brings some compelling facts to the table that really highlight the long-lasting impact that revenue growth from pricing has on successful subscription businesses.

"This is staggering. Consider that the median company in our survey grew 80% year-on-year during the expansion stage ($2.5-10M ARR) and 46% during the growth stage ($10-20M ARR). Pricing changes account for a relatively large percentage of that growth."

From CTA buttons to Facebook events, this teardown really has it all (and it's a big one!) If you want to understand how a SaaS behemoth operates across the board, Duncan's putting it all here for us on a plate.

"In my opinion, it’s impossible to achieve sustainable, significant growth if you don’t have a solid understanding of what metrics determine the success of your business, and are able to track and improve those numbers on an ongoing basis.
As you can see from their definition of Annualised Monthly Recurring Revenue, Xero are not afraid to change the metrics they use to define success as their business changes."

I don't see a lot of great writing on the process of announcing product features, and it feels like companies leave a lot on the table when it comes to rolling out changes to their product. As Pulkit explains, feature announcements can do a lot for boosting retention, customer loyalty and reducing churn.

"The forces of psychology work against you when you build new features. Unless a user is aware of the pain your feature addresses, they’d rather avoid using it in case something goes wrong.
Did you know that only 21% of iOS users install app updates within a week of release?"

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